Alton Towers Scarefest is here and we bring you 5 top tips to help you get the most out of your visit to the park.
If you’re worried about queues, what mazes to check out, or what’s new for the 2020 Scarefest season then look no further, we’re here to help!
Book the Maze Combo Ticket Around A Dusk Timeslot
With 2020 brings a new set of additions for the Scarefest season with the introduction of Garden Lights: Whispering Souls, a magical walkthrough of the gardens lit up in a whole new way and Freak Show: Toxic Junkyard, an outdoor scare zone/scare maze attraction reminiscent of the old freak show maze that Alton Towers used to host.
The Attic and Darkest Depths return for their second year of Alton Towers Scarefest with Altonville Mine Tours being thrown into the mix.
In terms of location, all of the mazes at this year’s Scarefest are located around the towers themselves.
The Attic is located in the same place as last year right next to Hex, Altonville Mine Tours is located just before the entrance to X-Sector, Toxic Junkyard is situated next to the Games Bunker by X-Sector and the lake and finally, Darkest Depths is to the left of the tower’s walkway before you head up to Hex / The Attic.
Having the mazes in such close proximity with one another means that you easily walk from one to another and not need to worry about your ticket expiring.
With the combo ticket, you have 90 minutes to complete 3 mazes within the time slot you’ve booked.
Having the mazes all within 10 minutes’ walk of each other is very handy indeed!
The Combo ticket includes Freak Show: Toxic Junkyard, The Attic and Altonville Mine Tours and is priced at £22.
Darkest Depths is an optional add-on priced at £8.
I’d certainly suggest booking your tickets around dusk as you can complete The Attic / Mine Tours and come out with enough darkness to enjoy Freak Show at its most effective nighttime environment.
But if you don’t have a combo ticket and you want to pick and choose your mazes then you should definitely…
Do The Attic, Altonville Mine Tours and Darkest Depths Mazes in the Daytime
Year after year it puzzles me why the queue lines are empty in the day for scare mazes.
Especially indoor scare mazes.
At night you see floods of queues as people wait for hours on end to get inside a maze.
Crazy.
The Attic, Altonville and Darkest Depths are INDOOR mazes.
They’re dark 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We ventured into The Attic at 2 pm and it was pitch black, the same goes for the other two.
Avoid the queues and walk straight inside and enjoy those 3 mazes before the ludicrous queues pile up.
The only maze worthy of your time at night is the outdoor Freak Show: Toxic Junkyard maze as stated previously.
Avoid Paying For Stall Food, Bring A Picnic or Head to the Restaurant
If you like a dry sawdusty tasting kebab or a dry tasteless burger then by all means shell out £8 on shoddy food.
Be my guest.
But to avoid the rather awful stall food (we’ve tried everything, it’s all bad) it’s probably best to bring your own.
If you want to splash the cash a little bit then you can’t go wrong with the Rollercoaster Restaurant, whilst the food isn’t Michelin star it’s a step up from the stall food.
I’ve had many meals within the Rollercoaster Restaurant and not one that I’ve walked away overly satisfied with but it fills a hole nonetheless.
It’s theme park food, you can’t really expect too much, can you?
There are also food stalls situated on the front lawn at the bottom of Towers Street.
Rethemed from Oktoberfest but selling the same food once again I’d probably avoid those too.
I have heard that the grill stall was serving some nice food but having not sampled it myself I cannot comment.
Head To Forbidden Valley Upon Entering the Park
Similar to our How To Beat the Queues at Alton Towers video we tried out our tips minus the ‘arriving early’ tip as we arrived an hour after the park opened and our method still worked!
Within 70 minutes of being in the park we had done 6 rides.
Upon entering the park guests usually head to Spinball or Wicker Man with some also heading down to The Smiler / Oblivion.
Rita, Th13teen, Nemesis and Galactica are all relatively quiet in the morning but with Nemesis being arguably the best coaster in the park we choose Forbidden Valley over the underwhelming (in my opinion) coasters in Dark Forest.
As you’re heading towards Nemesis make sure to walk-on any short queues you find (this includes Wicker Man but rarely does this have a short queue).
We jumped on Rapids (walk-on queue), Runaway Mine Train (walk-on queue) and Duel (walk-on queue) 60 minutes after the park opened during the busiest theme park event at Towers.
Not too bad at all.
Nemesis was on a 35-minute queue but with social distancing markers and the ridiculously long extended queue-lines we jumped on in 20 minutes.
If you hate queuing like myself then there is one extra option…
Fast Pass Night Rides
When the night draws in so do the queues, I always tend to find Forbidden Valley is quieter at night because most people are close to the exit of the park as families leave with their children early before closing time (9pm for Scarefest) or they’re all at Wicker Man for that exclusive night time ride on this wonderful wooden coaster.
Whilst Galactic and Nemesis are safe bets for short night time rides the same can’t be said for the others.
Dark Forest gets busy because Th13teen is a horror coaster and then Rita gets long queues too being just next door.
The Smiler and Oblivion at night always rack up long queues whilst Spinball is usually lovely and quiet which is surprising.
This is no doubt because people want to go on the ‘better’ rides at the park at night so Spinball goes unappreciated.
We had a night ride on Spinball on the opening night of Scarefest and just walked-on.
It had been running all day and we had an absolutely insane ride on it, the best I’ve ever had on a ride I don’t even rate that highly.
It was great fun!
Priced at £10 for a one-shot (bulk passes currently not available) you can pick and choose the ride via the app and pay for your fast track.
A 60-minute standard queue will become a 5 minute wait with Fast Pass (if that) so choose your rides wisely.
Wicker Man fast track always makes sense at Scarefest but it’s personal preference as to which one you want to check out.
Overall
Alton Towers Scarefest 2020 is certainly a step-up from years previous.
The mazes are very strong indeed and I was thoroughly impressed with the safety measures the park has added within the scare attractions.
Follow the tips and get the most out of your day at the UK’s best theme park!
For a full review of each individual maze head on over to Back to the Movies.
